Celebrating the Visitation and Quiet Miracles that Change the World

“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior”

I remember the first time I found out I was pregnant. I was already of “advanced maternal age,” and so the process was a little more fraught for me than it might be for a younger would-be mother. I remember the monthly tests, the anticipation, and the hoping. But I also remember being afraid to hope that this longed-for baby would become a reality. And then, finally, the relief and excitement of the positive test result. Then, immediately after that initial rush of joy, came a wave of fear, and the litany of questions. “Am I going to be able to do this?” “What if I’m no good at being a parent?” “What if I mess up?”

Though the circumstances of learning about our pregnancies were quite different, I imagine that these were the sort of questions running through Mary’s mind that day the Angel Gabriel delivered his message and she said yes to God. I imagine she had other questions, too. “What will my family say?” “What will my fiancé and his family say?” “Will I be thrown out of my father’s house, unwed, to raise this child of God all by myself?”

Barely a woman, she left her village and headed straight to a trusted female relative for advice on the unbelievable situation she found herself in. Her beloved Aunt Elizabeth was experiencing a miraculous pregnancy of her own, long declared barren until this unexpected conception in her old age. I expect the two supported each other in that trimester they spent together, removed from the wider world.

My favorite icons of their initial meeting show both women with their wombs open to the world, their babies visible (and often resembling fully grown children or even small men, written as they often were by monastics with little experience of childbirth). In the womb of Elizabeth, a tiny John the Baptist leaps with joy at the recognition of the Savior. And there, in Mary’s womb, Jesus, usually holding out a hand of blessing, sometimes radiating holiness and light, recognizes his cousin the prophet in turn. 

What relief Mary must have felt at her aunt’s greeting, a confirmation of the world-changing story that began in her conversation with God’s heavenly messenger. A story that even then she suspected would end in sorrow, though I doubt she could have expected the brutality of the cross. 

And her response to all of this? She sings. As the joy overtakes the fear, she finds confidence in the words of Gabriel and announces to the world that this child she carries is coming to turn the accepted hierarchies of the world upside down, to lift up the poor and feed the hungry, to give abundance to those who had only ever known want. Her song is a hymn for all who had been oppressed, a promise that God had great things planned for them, for us. Months later, after Jesus has been born in Bethlehem, Mary, recovering from the birth, receives the wondering shepherds in the manger, fresh off their encounter with the heavenly host. She hears their message, passed along from the angels, that her newborn son is the Messiah, the Savior, and we are told in Luke that she “treasured all these words, and pondered them in her heart.” 

Our family’s favorite Christmas picture book is Song of the Stars by Sally Lloyd-Jones, and in it she depicts this moment—Mary cradling the tiny Jesus, glowing with the light of the stars, and all the animals of the farm and field gathered around. “The One who made us has come to live with us,” the cows and sheep and goats and cheetahs say as they peer over the straw at the tiny child in swaddling clothes. “Our rescuer!” The book ends with the holy family standing under the expanse of the night sky, cradling “Heaven’s Son, sleeping under the stars that he made.” Lloyd-Jones does a powerful job of conveying the cosmic scale of the change that took place with the birth of Jesus into our world, while also capturing the intimacy of the first moments of a new baby’s life, the mother cradling this one that she has known for nine months but is only now meeting. Just like the story of Elizabeth welcoming the frightened Mary into a safe haven of love and support as they both anticipate the futures of the children they will give life to, it never fails to bring tears to my eyes—quiet, domestic miracles that changed the world.